Fifty Shades of Black (9 page)

 

 

Would You Read This, Please?

The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.

—Wendell Wilkie

I
'm worried about the increasing disappearance—and possible pending extinction—of two critical English language expressions.

Those expressions are: (a) Please and (b) Thank you.

Used to be common as song sparrows, those expressions. “Could you pass the potatoes, please?” “Yes, here you are.” “Thank you.”

I can still cast out as many pleases as I want, but I seldom hook a thank you. Instead I reel in “No worries,” “Sure,” “Cheers,” “No problem,” “You betcha,” “Right” and occasionally “Have a good one.”

Such expressions are hardly hostile, but they're also not quite as heartfelt or sincere as a simple thank you. There's an ironic aura of “no big deal” about them. They don't represent a connection between two people; it's more like a disconnection.

Lisa Gache, a consultant in Los Angeles, has noticed too. She says what used to be common courtesy in civil discourse is on the way out and being replaced by all things casual. “Casual conversation, casual dress and casual behavior have hijacked practically all areas of life,” she says, “and I do not think it is doing anyone a service.”

Wade Davis, the Canadian anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author and photographer, travels the world but when he's in North America, he says, it's never hard to tell whether he's north or south of the border. Just go in the nearest supermarket. In Canada, he says, you usually have eye contact with the cashier and a brief conversation, while in the US the transaction is totally impersonal. You could be dealing with a robot. Davis says it's a class thing. In Canada, the chances are very good that the cashier's kids and your kids go to the same school, play on the same soccer team and live in the same neighbourhood. Whereas in an American store you're often dealing with a bussed-in, part-time worker from a poorer neighbourhood, working for minimum wage and living in a whole different society. Why would she or he be friendly? Aside from a few bags of groceries on the checkout counter you two have almost nothing in common.

I notice a growing remoteness with the people I deal with in public here in Canada. My partner, who has a way of crystallizing my various melodramas, laughed when I mentioned the Public Chill.

“What do you expect—you're a geezer,” she said. “That makes you invisible to anyone under twenty-five.”

A retired scientist I know concurs. “We've noticed that the lack of acknowledgement and general politeness isn't confined to strangers,” he writes. “Neighbours, friends and even spouses of our children seem to have a hard time giving thanks of any kind.”

Maybe it is just a generational thing. If so, there are signs that some adults are getting a little tired of being treated like doormats. Tom Jordan of North Carolina, for instance, who discovered that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Hannah, was cursing her parents out on Facebook, telling the world they treated her “like a damn slave” because they expected her to do chores around the house.

Dad took the laptop out in the yard, set up a webcam, shot the laptop nine times with a gun and posted the video to YouTube for “all those kids who thought it was cool how rebellious you were.”

Now that's an extreme (and extremely American) reaction to bad manners. I prefer the approach taken by the famous actress Ethel Barrymore, who once invited a young actress to a dinner party. Not only did the guest not appear, she didn't bother to let Barrymore know in advance, or to account for her absence afterward. Several days later the two women met unexpectedly.

“I think I was invited to your house for dinner last week,” the young actress said lamely.

“Oh, yes,” replied Barrymore brightly. “Did you come?”

 

 

Forever Moe

I
f you saw him lumbering across the green—baggy sweater, rumpled work pants, built like a refrigerator, red-faced under a thatch of unruly hair—you'd assume he was there to rake the sand traps.

You'd never guess you were looking at the best golfer in the world.

Not my opinion—Vijay Singh's. Lee Trevino called him “a genius.” Sam Snead said he was the best ball striker he'd ever seen. Tiger Woods said that only two golfers in history “owned their swings.” One was Ben Hogan; the other was that farm kid from Kitchener, Ontario—what was his name? Oh, yeah—Norman. Moe Norman.

They called him Pipeline Moe because he could line a golf ball straight as a laser beam, shot after shot after shot. Ben Hogan wasn't buying. Hogan claimed that any golf shot that went straight was “an accident.” One day he stood behind Moe as he pounded a ball arrow-straight down the fairway. “Accident,” murmured Hogan. Moe teed off another one. “Accident,” said Hogan. After six more drives Hogan shook his head and walked off, muttering, “Keep hitting those accidents, kid.”

Moe Norman wasn't a golfing legend; he was a golfing god. A score of sixty is considered a perfect game, virtually unattainable. Moe carded three games of fifty-nine and four of sixty-one. Most golfers only dream of a hole-in-one. Moe had seventeen. He owned the course record at thirty different clubs. He held multiple championships from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and the approbation of every knowledgeable golfer on the continent.

So how come the rest of us never heard of him?

Because Norman was paralyzingly shy. It's a wonder he ever worked up the nerve to swing a club in front of spectators; in most social situations, Moe couldn't string two words together. When he won the Canadian Golf Championship in 1955, officials couldn't find him to present the cup. Moe was hiding in the locker room.

No one knows why Moe was so profoundly uncomfortable in public, but that and his volcanic temper (snubbed by a PGA functionary for violating the dress code, Moe swore he would never play in the US again—and he didn't) consigned Moe to the sidelines of the pro golfing world. He played in exhibition matches, even played rounds “back to front”—driving with a putter, putting with his driver—and still made par. He drove himself from tournament to tournament in his dusty old Cadillac (which he slept in, usually), subsisting on junk food and winning enough to keep him on the circuit.

He dominated the Canadian golf scene in the 1950s but he shunned the Bigs, perhaps afraid of being embarrassed again. Lee Trevino: “I think if someone had just taken Moe under their wing and said, ‘Look, we're going to play here, don't be afraid'—there's no telling what Moe Norman could have won.”

He mesmerized onlookers, including the president of Titleist Corporation, who was so impressed he offered a lifetime contract that paid Moe five thousand dollars a month. Just to play golf.

It was generous, but it was late. Moe was sixty-six by then, and past his prime. Nine years later he was dead, of congestive heart failure.

But the anecdotes live on. Such as the time he and Sam Snead were playing a fairway intersected by a creek 240 yards away. Snead warned Moe he couldn't clear the creek with a driver. “Not trying to,” said Moe. “I'm playing for the bridge.” Snead's shot landed on the near side of the creek; Moe's landed on the bridge, then dribbled across to the other side.

Ho-hum. Just another Moe Norman accident.

 

 

Just a Card to Say: Way to Go!

A
word or two on behalf of the postcard.

I know—they're hopelessly old-fashioned. Went out with hoop skirts and penny-farthing bicycles. Imagine sitting down to write a card to someone. First, you have to think of something to say, then you have to look up their mailing address after which you have to cough up—what is it, close to a buck now?—for a stamp. Finally, you have to find yourself a post box (good luck with that) to drop the card in.

Oh yes—and brush up your penmanship skills so you don't come off looking like a drunk or a chimp playing with a ballpoint.

Put yourself through all that when you've got the option of hauling out your cell and tweeting them in a nanosecond? Ridiculous.

And yet . . . there's something about a postcard that no BlackBerry, iPhone or Android device can match. A postcard is from me to you—not from one device to another. And the fact that so much time passes between thinking of writing it and popping it in the mail means consideration is involved. You have time to think about what you're saying. It's not just tap it out and press “SEND.”

There is one other, ah, factor that makes me personally fond of sending postcards.

I happen to have several thousand of them in my attic. Unused. They are blank on one side; the other side shows a photo of me under the banner “BASIC BLACK.” I used to host a weekly radio show on CBC by that name. I retired ten years ago and while cleaning out my office I noticed three boxes of unsullied
Basic Black
postcards stacked by the garbage can. I asked the janitor what was happening with them. “They'll be shredded, I guess.”

A high, keening wail filled the halls of the CBC. It was the wraith of my ancient departed Scottish grandmother wailing, “Och, aye, ye'll no be wastin' those, laddie.”And I didn't. I took those boxes home and for the past ten years I've been scribbling on their backsides and sending them out to whoever tickled my fancy.

A friend asked me if I didn't feel a little weird, sending out postcards advertising a radio show that's been off the air for a decade. Not at all, I said. I look on them as tiny retro gifts from an age gone by that I send to people I admire. What's more, postcards impose a necessary brevity that is almost poetic. The reduced message area means you really have to think about what you write—no room for discursive ramblings about weather, your wonky knee or the hapless Blue Jays.

As for whom to send a card to—for that I take the advice of a writer named James Mangan, who says those postcards and letters matter a great deal—even if all they say is “Attaboy!”

“Write to the author whose story gave you a delightful half-hour last night,” says Mangan. “Write to the cartoonist whose strip you devoured this morning; to the teacher who inspired you twenty years ago; to the doctor who saved your baby's life; to your old employer to show him there was something more between you than a paycheque.”

You get the picture. There are dozens—probably hundreds—of people you've fantasized about patting on the back and saying “Well done” to. A phone call is a bit over the top and a tweet or an email would just be, well, a tweet or an email.

Perhaps it's an Air Canada flight attendant who found your missing wallet or a Paralympics wheelchair racer who made your heartstrings twang. A grocery clerk who smiled when you needed it badly; perhaps a politician who did the right, instead of the expedient, thing. The world is full of people who behave better than they absolutely have to. Won't you send at least one of them a note or postcard to tell them so?

Attaboy!

 

 

Sally Armstrong: Hero

W
hen I retired from hosting
Basic Black
in 1992 it meant, among other things, giving up my weekly commute to Vancouver. At my retirement party a producer sidled up to me and said, “Are you sure you can handle living full time on Salt Spring? I mean, I know it's peaceful and all, but man, it's the boonies! You'll go stir-crazy.”

Well, I'm ten years in and I wish I could sidle up to that producer and say, “Were you drunk?” I'm as busy as I ever was when I slogged off to Vancouver every week. The only things no longer in my life are police sirens, panhandlers and getting stuck in the George Massey Tunnel in rush hour.

Okay, and a weekly paycheque. That's missing too. But as for outside stimulation, that's not a big problem on Salt Spring. In the last month I've been to talks by Robert Bateman and Wade Douglas; I've seen the movies
The Artist
and
The Hunger Games
; spent an evening listening to world-renowned blues harmonica virtuoso Carlos del Junco . . .

Oh yeah, and I got to hear Sally Armstrong, too. She spoke at the Salt Spring Legion and she is a powerhouse. I first met her a million years ago when she was editor of
Homemakers
magazine and I was a freelancer trying to sell her a story about a brothel in Thunder Bay.

That story didn't pan out, because of a lack of enthusiasm. Not on Sally's part; she was gung-ho but I kind of lost interest when I discovered that the proprietors of the brothel had strong-ish Montreal Mafia connections.

But that, as Sally would probably say, is another story. She uses that phrase a lot as she segues from one chapter to another of her turbulent life. She's been an editor and a columnist and a reporter and a documentary filmmaker. She's hit most of the world's hellholes: Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, Bangladesh. She's spent much of the past fifteen years in that hellhole of hellholes—Afghanistan. She specializes in investigating zones of conflict—specifically, the plight of girls and women trapped there. She's not doing it as a sightseer or a thrill-seeker. Sally Armstrong wants to change things. And she thinks that mobilizing the women is the way to do it.

Hard to argue. Males have been in charge of those hellholes since forever, and look at the mess they've made. And contrary to the tone we detect on the news, Sally Armstrong is optimistic about Afghanistan's future—albeit guardedly. She talks about the actions of one group called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. It's headquartered in Calgary but has volunteer chapters across the country. They threw a series of potluck suppers, “that most Canadian of institutions,” as Armstrong calls them. They raised enough money to put
fifty thousand
Afghan girls in schools. It doesn't take billions. An Afghan teacher earns about $750 a year. And when you're in a country with an illiteracy rate of 85 percent, the only way out is up.

More importantly, women in Afghanistan are taking their first shaky steps in support of women in Afghanistan. Armstrong told the story of Noorjahan Akbar, a student who started a group in Kabul called Young Women for Change. They collect books, set up libraries, arrange lectures. She's just twenty-one, but 65 percent of Afghanis are under the age of twenty-five.

They've only known bombs and blood and chaos and corruption but they have access to iPhones and the Internet and they want something different. With agents like Sally Armstrong and Noorjahan Akbar spreading the word, in venues as various as Kabul markets and the Salt Spring Legion . . . they just might have a shot at it.